[MSO] Senior Infrastructure Automation Engineer (Ansible)

Software Mind develops solutions that make an impact for companies around the globe. Tech giants & unicorns, transformative projects, emerging technologies and limitless opportunities - these are a few words that describe an average day for us. Building cross-functional engineering teams that take ownership and crave more means we’re always on the lookout for talented people who bring passion and creativity to every project. Our culture embraces openness, acts with respect, shows grit & guts and combines employment with enjoyment.

Project - the aim you’ll have

We are looking for a Senior Infrastructure Automation Engineer to help build an automation practice for a leading IT infrastructure provider in the Netherlands.

Automation is already being done, but it has grown in several directions at once - different approaches, different standards and different repository layouts running in parallel. A large part of this role is bringing that together into one practice the whole team works with.

You will join a 12+ person Polish engineering team responsible for maintaining the client's Linux and Windows estate and for delivering transformation projects on it. The environment carries a significant legacy footprint, built up over years of operations. At the same time we are building a completely new platform based on OpenStack, so the automation you create will cover both: keeping the existing estate running, and making sure the new platform is automated from day one rather than years later.

You will also have a software development team as a help, so when something needs to be properly engineered rather than scripted around, you will not be solving it alone.

Your first deliverable is continuous patching across Linux and Windows - moving the client from scheduled manual patching cycles to an automated, continuously running process. From there the practice expands into deployment automation, configuration management and process automation across the estate.

Role - how you’ll contribute

• Writing Ansible automation - playbooks, roles, modules and collections - this is the core, day-to-day work of the role
• Help shape the automation practice: standards, repository structure and code review process, worked out together with the team
• Patch management automation
• Deployment automation
• Configuration management
• Systems and process automation
• Project-driven infrastructure transformations - bring automation into the transformation projects the team delivers, so that what is built new is automated from the start
• Support, configure and manage the automation platform
• Automation-related code review and maintenance across the team
• CI/CD configuration and management for automation code
• Define and maintain the inventory and source of truth the automation runs against
• Introduce testing for automation code, so changes can be released to a production estate with confidence
• Work with engineers maintaining the estate to identify what should be automated next, and in what order
• Share knowledge with the team so the practice is something everyone can work with
• Produce and maintain the technical documentation that makes the practice usable by others

Expectations - the experience you need

• Advanced knowledge and experience in using, configuring and maintaining automation platforms, preferably AAP/AWX
• Understanding best practices for writing and maintaining Ansible code and repositories
• Developing Ansible playbooks, roles and modules; maintaining Ansible collections
• Using Ansible to manage systems and processes at scale
• Advanced understanding of IaC principles
• Practical experience with patch management across both Linux and Windows systems
• Experience working across various Linux distributions
• Programming skills, preferably Python
• Solid Git and version control practice applied to automation code
• Experience creating and maintaining technical documentation
• English at C1 level - the working language with the client, including direct contact with client-side engineers and stakeholders

Additional skills - the edge you have

• OpenStack - we are building a new platform on it, so experience here is a strong plus
• Experience consolidating scattered automation into a single, consistent practice
• Experience setting technical standards and getting a team to adopt them
• Good understanding of virtualization concepts
• Puppet - part of the current estate, and consolidating it into Ansible is within the scope of this role
• Experience migrating from another configuration management tool to Ansible
• Testing frameworks for Ansible (e.g. Molecule)
• Observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana)
• IPAM, IAM
• Basic networking, system firewalls, storage
• Red Hat / Ansible certifications

What we offer:

• Flexible and remote cooperation options
• International projects with leading global clients
• Travels related to international projects
• Non-corporate atmosphere
• Access* to language classes
• Access* to knowledge-sharing initiatives
• Access* to private healthcare and life insurance
• Access* to multisport card

*The availability and terms of individual benefits may vary depending on the chosen form of cooperation.